


sleepovers are hard :(

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen, Genderbend, Genderswap, Rule 63, that's a lot of gender tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:06:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a thirty-something year old dude has lil girls in his apartment</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleepovers are hard :(

Your name is Bro Strider (or at least that’s what you have everyone call you), and you’re stuck with two thirteen year old girls in your apartment.

It was originally going to be a girl and a boy. You were going to watch your kid siblings for the weekend so Mom could have a break for her birthday. Ross and Devin came to your apartment often anyway, so it’s not like it would be much trouble.

This time around though, the kids wanted to hang out with their friends Jaden and Johanna. Their dad apparently refused to have four kids in the house at once. You don’t blame him. You did the same thing, actually. But after a series of negotiations and phone calls, you decided Ross and Jaden would stay with him while Johanna and Devin stayed with you.

In retrospect, you shouldn’t have volunteered to take the girls.

Thirteen year old girls are…well, very girly. Devin isn’t so bad (but seriously, Mom should have called her Monica; it would’ve been fucking sweet to have a Friends reference in the family) but Johanna is pretty chipper.

Okay, that’s probably your fault for letting them help themselves to six liters of soda and two large pizzas. But still.

You tried to leave them alone for the most part. You were never a man of many words, and they were both pretty talkative. Also, it’s a bit creepy for a twenty-something going on thirty-something to hang around middle school girls. But that didn’t stop you from hearing them. They were fucking loud.

At least they got quieter as the night went on. Somewhere around two in the morning you decided to check up on them. You could still hear the TV from your room, though you thought Devin was normally asleep by that time.

You were right. Mean Girls was playing, but from the looks of it the girls had stopped watching long ago. Your sister had probably fallen asleep, because A. she’s still wearing her shades; B. there are Slimers drawn all over her cheeks and forehead in what looks like black Sharpie; and C. Johanna is currently painting her toenails in a shade of bright blue you know she hates.

 You wait until she finishes one toe before speaking up. “Dude, she’s going to be pissed when she wakes up.”

Johanna looks up in surprise, as if she didn’t even notice you, before she grins widely. “I know, it’ll be great!”

As she finishes the last toe, you watch and debate staying for the rest of the movie, because it’s Mean Girls and just fuck yes. But you don’t want to fall asleep out here and wake up with a work of art on your face, so you decide to just grab some orange soda and go work on one of your robots or something.

Your plans are interrupted as soon as you fetch the bottle from the fridge. “Hey. What are you doing in there anyway?”

“Fucking around, mostly.” You shrug. “Nothing you’d find interesting.”

“Try me.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Practicing ventriloquism and trying to figure out how to make pancakes.”

“Okay, you’re right, that’s boring.” Well, at least she’s honest. “Come help me figure out what else I should do to Dev before she wakes up.”

“Nah, if you’re bored you should just wake her up. Then she can paint your toenails too and you can talk about boys and stuff.”

At this Johanna grins and sets down the blue nail polish. “Or I could just do that with you! Come on, sit down, pick a color.”

She holds up a bag that looks like it’s completely filled with nail polish. Normally you’d refuse and abscond, but damn. You’re bored, and this chick that’s all messy hair and buck teeth looks genuinely excited. As you find yourself asking if she has orange, you wonder if you’ve become a pushover or if this is just an affect she has on people.

You sit on the floor next to her, placing your feet flat on the ground and hugging your thighs. Johanna produces a bottle of bright orange nail polish and starts to shake it.

“So, boys!”

“Boys.” You nod in agreement and secretly hope that’s the end of the boy talk.

Of course, she’s not that merciful. “Come on, tell me. What’s your type?”

You watch her start to coat your toenails in orange paint as you turn the question around in your head. This is just so awkward; you can’t talk about this stuff with your kid sister’s best friend. You bite your lip as you try to decide how to respond.

There’s a pause in the toenail painting, and you look up to see Johanna’s eyebrows raised at you. “I know that look. You like someone, don’t you?”

“No.” Yes. Sort of. “Okay, don’t laugh, but I really like the Indiana Jones type. Except maybe not that old. Maybe more like James McAvoy.”

“James McAvoy isn’t anything like Indiana Jones,” she pointed out without looking up. You could practically hear her smiling though.

“Shut up. I can have more than one type.” You almost move to kick her, but that would probably mess up your toes.

She seems to consider that before shrugging. “Fair enough. I guess Nic Cage and Matt McConaughey aren’t all that alike either.”

You pause in the middle of drinking your orange soda at that. Suddenly you’re not so self-conscious about your own preferences. “No. You did not just admit to seriously liking those guys.”

“Hey. Shut up.”

“It’s not my fault you have bad taste.”

She sticks her tongue out at you as she finishes your right foot. You just smirk.

The banter pretty much continues like that for the next ten minutes. Johanna starts on a second coat a few seconds after you thought she was done. Well, that just goes to show how much you know about nail polish.

You end up offering to do her toenails too, and she picks a shade of blue darker than what she used for Devin’s toes. Around this point your banter devolved into quoting the movie as it played.

You’re amused when Tina Fey asks everyone to raise their hands if they’ve ever felt personally victimized by Regina George, and you both sheepishly raise yours. It makes you think Johanna is cooler than she looks.

You do two coats of nail polish for Johanna as well. It’s not as neat as her work, but you think it’s pretty good for your first time.

You end up staying or the rest of the movie too. Johanna looked like she’d been kind of worried that you’d go back to your room. You suppose maybe she’s not tired and doesn’t want to be bored. You can’t really blame her.

Besides, this movie is fantastic. At the mathlete competition part, you find yourself trying to figure out if the math is correct. Johanna notices and asks if it is. You say yes. She laughs and calls you a nerd.

That quickly turns into more banter.

“So I like math. That’s not even a bad thing.”

“No, but it’s boring.”

“Alright then, what kind of things do you like?”

She tilts her head back as she tries to think. “Movies, magic tricks, biology…”

“Boring, boring, boring.”

“Ghosts, video games, computer programming…”

“Boring, boring. Wait, you’re a programmer?”

From there you start talking about technology. She admits that she’s not all that good at it, but she’s only thirteen so you think that’s okay. You tell her about your robots and the AI program you’re trying to write.

When the conversation lulls, you just start quoting the movie again.

Then at the end of the Spring Fling scene, you start singing along with it. Overdramatically.

Johanna starts singing the guitar part at the end of the lyrics. You roll your eyes at her and call her a dork, but you make sure she knows you’re joking.

It’s about then that you hear a “The fuck, Bro?” coming from the futon behind you.

Both of you turn to see Devin sitting up and rubbing her eyes, her shades pushed on top of her head. It looks like she’s still half asleep.

Shit. Time to abscond.

“I was just watching the movie, sis.” You push yourself up to your orange-painted feet and make your way over to your room. “Guess it’s almost over now though. Don’t stay up too late. I’m making blueberry pancakes in the morning, and if you guys don’t get up on time you won’t get any.”

You hear a “Goodnight” from Johanna and a “Sweet dreams, Pumpkin” from Dev when you reach the door to your bedroom. You call “’Night” back over your shoulder before closing the door.

Almost immediately after, you hear Johanna say “He was joking about not feeding us, right?”

A snort. “No, but don’t worry. He won’t be up until half past noon.”

A pause. “Holy shit, what did you do to my toes?”


End file.
